Dyer’s Wharf: 195 Commission Design Reaches Lowest Level Yet–Architecture Critic Morgan

Dyer’s Wharf: 195 Commission Design Reaches Lowest Level Yet–Architecture Critic Morgan

 

 

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Ever since the waterfront land where the old interstate once crossed the river has been opened up for development, the 195 Commission, the putative guardians of this urban treasure, has given Providence one mediocre piece of architecture after another. With the exception of 225 Dyer Street and the pedestrian bridge, every piece of the 195 puzzle, from the parking garage to the apartments surrounding Trader Joe’s, has been saddled with less-than-stellar architectural design. Dyer’s Wharf should have been a key piece in the heart of the city. Instead, it represents the evil of banality.

 

                                 

Dyer’s Wharf is an absolute turkey. What self-respecting noble city with a reputation for creativity, would allow, much less welcome, this urbanistic bully with nothing to offer except expensive apartments? Even if an out-of-town developer is willing to put money behind such a dog, is there no responsible public servant able to stand up to the aesthetic cluelessness of the 195 Commission? Does anyone believe this clunky box will add anything to the Providence townscape or our cultural reputation?

 

 

Even the architects of this dud seem slightly embarrassed by Dyer’s Wharf. SGA is a Boston and New York-based firm with reputation for mostly serviceable and not objectionable corporate headquarters, banks, and college dormitories. They have actually done a few good buildings, while most of the buildings on SGA’s website are handsomer than Dyer’s Wharf (even the faded industrial town of Haverhill, Massachusetts, gets an intriguing ten-story riverside apartment block). Almost as if to convince themselves, SGA employs terms like “great” and “dynamic,” and “respecting existing architect context.” Saddest of all is SGA’s declaration, “We create meaningful experiences through great design.” When I was in architecture school, if students presented a design project as awful as this one, they would have been shamed out of the studio.

 

Not that the 195 Commission did not have chance to make this a better building. The original design proposal for Dyer’s Wharf had a rippling, wave-like façade. Although better suited to Rio’s Copacabana or Miami Beach, this pulsating façade and its protruding upper stories allowed varying views, as well as balconies for the larger apartments. While the location is inappropriate, the scheme at least offers some visual interest and a sense of humor.

 

 

The project became too expensive, so a dumbed-down version was drawn, offering as much building as the CV Properties believed it could afford. Parcels 14 and 15 thus became just another piece of real estate. (The same thing happened to the Urbanica design for Parcel 2, where the few unusual elements of goodness were stripped from the design.) The financial reasons for these shortcomings are understandable, but just because you can put a building here doesn’t mean you should. We need to wait until the city can entice an architect and developer willing to do something meaningful–an experimental structure, say, using innovative materials, or an affirming, understated design. The community response to the egregious, suburban-office-park blue box was so negative that the Commission asked for revisions.

What the Commission should have asked for, however, was a complete redesign, not just minor tweaks. The suggested modifications offered by 195 Commission’s design advisor, Tim Love of the architecture firm Utile, did not improve the ugly monolith; the changes are so minor as to be putting lipstick on a pig. Love was once a Harvard wunderkind, and his firm touts “fresh ways to think about how we develop and build our cities.” But in Providence, Love’s advice rarely challenges the Commission in ways that it ought to be challenged. At its July 24 meeting, the Commission approved the revised scheme, and it will indubitably be rubber-stamped by the Downtown Design Review Commission.

 

    

The revised scheme, as Lorenzo Apicella, the Jewelry District’s design advisor, wrote to the Commission, “only cosmetically address your initial design panel’s and the community’s concerns.” The distinguished Anglo-Italian architect argued that this valuable riverside park requires “a clear-eyed re-assessment and a bold reconfiguring.” The pro-development Apicella was hopeful that the developer’s design team could “deliver an elegant contemporary design worthy of its prominent context.”

 

 

Alas, that optimism has been squashed by the Commission’s ham-fisted visual illiteracy. This building’s gift to Providence is a poke in the eye. We can only watch in horror to see what sort of everywhere-and-anywhere design will be foisted on Parcel 5, the prominent lot on the east side of the river. The fumbling Dyer’s Wharf episode has demonstrated, yet again, that the 195 Commission cannot be trusted with our city’s precious patrimony, nor its future.