Visions 2200 - A Perspective on the Future

Pedestals

Queen Victoria seated in Piccadilly Gardens, Manchester, England

Queen Victoria sits on her pedestal in Manchester's Piccadilly Gardens. Beyond rise two high-rises on their own pedestal as shown more clearly in the image below.

The pedestal underlying the queen's statue is hardly noticed by admirers of her eminence. Close perusal focuses on the queen herself and the product of the sculpter's skill. The pedestal itself escapes all notice, although its footing provides a place to sit as you gaze out on the Garden's activities.

In contrast, the two high-rise structures beyond the statue disappear from awareness as you approach the pedestal from which they arise. A few feet away, their existence is forgotten as you focus on obtaining food from the restaurants housed within or threading among the people and trams to a destination beyond. You cannot even see these structures rising above when eating at the outside tables. The pedestal has become the focus of all attention related to the building.

Respecting buildings, the impacts emanating from the ground level are most forceful on the awareness of neighbors or passersby when the base takes the form of a pedestal. In these cases, if the pedestal is broad enough, such as in the first examples below, the passing pedestrian may not even be aware that the structure rising above the pedestral is part of the same building. To the pedestrian on the sidewalk or the passenger in a passing car, the entire psychological and environmental thrust of the building emerges from the pedestal at its base.

The message for future designers of buildings with pedestals is clear. You cannot ignore the pedestal or design it as an afterthought as with a statue. The effect on the buildings and people in the vicinity is too great. Pull your attention away from the building's high-rise magnificence when viewed from afar. Put your eyes on that base and imagine walking past those walls. Will the effects be uplifting or at least consistent with the surroundings? Imagined you lived in this neighborhood. Would you want that pedestal as your new neighbor?
Hotel and office building rising above a platform (pedestal) defining the southwest side of Piccadilly Gardens in Manchester, England.

San Jose Pedestal
The three images above are all of the same building which sits on a pedestal extending across an entire city block. The pedestal contains an auto parking garage. The facade for about 75% of the building frontage (as illustrated by the red band in the Google Earth view to the right) is a tan masonry pedestal wall, with ventilation openings at eye level (see image at top to the left).

The design approach is not necessarily bad. Its adversity to the urban fabric is generated by the visible uses within the pedestal and the facade design. Cars can be seen inside the garage from the sidewalk. The pedestrians on this sidewalk have one objective, get to the next block as fast as their feet can take them. There is nothing here to hold their interest. In contrast, the 25% of building frontage with windows and shops on the ground floor (image immediately above to the left) is a very different and more positive experience.

An alternative approach would have been to add another story to the garage, reduce its footprint by bringing it in from the street frontage, and wrapping the structure with retail spaces and small offices accessible from the street.

'The Summit' - Eichler's Tower in San Francisco
This tower, built in the early 1960s, rises at the corner of Green and Jones Street on Russian Hill in San Francisco. The image on the left gives a sense of the skyscraper's skyline appearance, which actually cantilevers out on the higher stories. The image on the middle bottom & right shows the pedestal base alone and in the context of nearby buildings. The image on the right shows how placement of residential units on the streetside of the garage could have better tied the tower in with the community. Note the ramp rising in the lower right corner of the photo. This leads to a street further up on the hill. Here, as shown in the upper middle image, there is a relatively more friendly connection with the neighborhood.

Joseph Eichler, the developer of this 32 story tower, was known for his single family home developments of modern style. This tower is the tallest building he ever built. Objections by neighbors to this and other high rises thoughout the city convinced San Francisco to reduce height limits in much of the city in the early 1970s.

The skyscraper's design if located in a different neighborhood could be seen as a positive addition to the city skyline. The most significant problem is the base and the way this brutish, concrete fortress of a pedestal clashes with the Russian Hill neighborhood.

Reducing the garage footprint and fitting multilevel apartments between the columns might have reduced the dissidence with the community. Another parking level may have been needed, but the result would have been preferable.

As it is now, the physical separation is reflected by the community reality, the building inhabitants are relatively insular, not neighborly. Apartments at the street level with direct access to the sidewalk might have created an entirely different relationship with the surrounding community.
 

H Graem © 2006