Jump to content

Hampton Heights: Condominium Building At 1800 W. 15th St.


Urbannizer

Recommended Posts

https://www.surgehomes.com/houston-tx/hamptonheights-0

 

Quote

Hampton Heights is a new community of condominiums designed with a modern-day sensibility. With fresh styling and an affordable price tag, these homes provide a sophisticated oasis in the midst of Houston’s historic-yet-hip neighborhood of the Greater Heights. With a variety of floor plans ranging from 702 square feet to 1,030 square feet, this five-story building includes one- and two-bedroom condos – most with balconies and many with unobstructed views. The development offers covered, secure parking and large windows to bring in an abundance of natural light.

 

Hampton-Heights_1600x800-72dpi_web.jpg?t

 

file-2206872273-036193-edited.jpg?t=1524

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Another post-modern mess...

Surge Homes, unless you have Michael Graves on your staff (which is impossible, you know, because he is dead) then don't do this. We get enough style bending messes from home builders in suburbia, you have to do better than this! I'm sure you guys can do better than this!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I like the upper four stories. The bottom two is a dystopian nightmare of a world in which vehicles and gates have displaced neighborhood and community, but perhaps the whole thing is meant as a clever satire on our current political situation? "Fortress Pleasantville" might be a good name for it. In its total tongue-in-cheek inauthenticity, it has a certain authenticity.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I see what they're trying to go for. Fine-grained urbanism is a lot more visually interesting than course-grained urbanism, so lots of times coarse-grained buildings get dressed up as fine-grained blocks. However, for this to work, you have to follow it all the way to the ground. In this case, you still get all the street-level disadvantages of course-grained development (a continuous wall of parking garage), with visual confusion on top (since there's no reason for the breaks in the facade). 

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...

We’ve experienced much success in Houston by collaborating with residents and future homebuyers to plan our communities in an interactive manner. Today, we want to push our plan one step further and ask for your comments on a draft rendering that normally would never be shown publicly but one which we use in-house with our architect to apply different materials and colors to determine the final exterior design. Of course, the attached rendering is plain and does not show landscaping or a beautiful finish and therefore builders don’t normally reveal this work-in-progress to the public. Since members of this forum have proven to be very generous in providing us with insightful comments, we’d like to ask for your recommendations for the exterior envelope and we’ll propose colored renderings. Please keep affordability in mind when making your suggestions because this is what helps our buyers become owners. We previously addressed, in this thread, that the rendering in the first post was just a draft and will change. Attached is a new, never-before-released, rendering of the exterior architecture of the building and we’d like your opinion on materials and colors. We want this condominium development, Hampton Heights, to contribute to the landscape of the Greater Heights and we welcome and value your collaboration in our effort to achieve this goal.

Hampton Heights.png

Link to comment
Share on other sites

48 minutes ago, SurgeHomes said:

We’ve experienced much success in Houston by collaborating with residents and future homebuyers to plan our communities in an interactive manner. Today, we want to push our plan one step further and ask for your comments on a draft rendering that normally would never be shown publicly but one which we use in-house with our architect to apply different materials and colors to determine the final exterior design. Of course, the attached rendering is plain and does not show landscaping or a beautiful finish and therefore builders don’t normally reveal this work-in-progress to the public. Since members of this forum have proven to be very generous in providing us with insightful comments, we’d like to ask for your recommendations for the exterior envelope and we’ll propose colored renderings. Please keep affordability in mind when making your suggestions because this is what helps our buyers become owners. We previously addressed, in this thread, that the rendering in the first post was just a draft and will change. Attached is a new, never-before-released, rendering of the exterior architecture of the building and we’d like your opinion on materials and colors. We want this condominium development, Hampton Heights, to contribute to the landscape of the Greater Heights and we welcome and value your collaboration in our effort to achieve this goal.

Hampton Heights.png

 

 

I’m not a big fan of the stairwell design. I wish it was more integrated into the building. Also the pitched roof over the stairwells are very Hamilton-ish - think your better with a flat roof with some sort of metal canopy architectural element. 

 

on a side note - always wondered why most apartments have balconies? I may represent the minority, but I would much rather have that space for a living area. 

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 4/25/2018 at 10:08 AM, Angostura said:

I see what they're trying to go for. Fine-grained urbanism is a lot more visually interesting than course-grained urbanism, so lots of times coarse-grained buildings get dressed up as fine-grained blocks. However, for this to work, you have to follow it all the way to the ground. In this case, you still get all the street-level disadvantages of course-grained development (a continuous wall of parking garage), with visual confusion on top (since there's no reason for the breaks in the facade). 

 

 

 

Its a great point. However it should be genuine. That kind of urbanism comes with the development of properties over time as they each build separately and play off the styles and looks of one another. Manufacturing that kind of urbanism top down just comes off as kitsch. If its a single building than make the building holistic with elements that differentiate certain areas that give more definition to the facade that faces the outside. The only way we will be able to get that desired fine-grained urbanism is to create bottom up and watch it grow over time, or cut the development into phases and build it over different instances with different clients/architects.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 hours ago, Luminare said:

 

Its a great point. However it should be genuine. That kind of urbanism comes with the development of properties over time as they each build separately and play off the styles and looks of one another. Manufacturing that kind of urbanism top down just comes off as kitsch. If its a single building than make the building holistic with elements that differentiate certain areas that give more definition to the facade that faces the outside. The only way we will be able to get that desired fine-grained urbanism is to create bottom up and watch it grow over time, or cut the development into phases and build it over different instances with different clients/architects.

 

We get it in certain parts of town, but not at this level of density. This blockface, for example, has pretty much been completely changed over the last 10-12 years, one lot at a time. 

 

There are some impediments to this. When you have parking requirements at the dwelling unit level, it can be much more efficient to centralize the parking. Add in setbacks, especially lateral setbacks, and the buildable area goes way up when you consolidate. Barring those constraints, you could, in theory, take a city block. replat into 25-ft frontages, maybe run an alley or private driveway through the middle, impose some design guidelines, and let each individual purchaser to develop as they see fit. Sort of a suburban subdevelopment model with urban density. Some people would build a single townhouse, some a 4-unit apartment building, some maybe residential over retail.

 

However, the value to the developer is usually in the built square footage. That is, 50 smaller lots are worth more than one bid one. The only reason to break up a block-sized plot would be if you don't have the capital to develop the whole thing at once.

 

I once lived in a building in a very dense urban area (outside the US). The original owner of the building used to own the entire block. He re-platted the block into small parcels and sold of 95% of the land to fund the construction of the building. The area is now mostly built out with fine-grained low-rise 4 to 20-unit condo buildings. No one would think of doing that today, for a couple reasons. First, in any place that will support that kind of density, the land value is high enough that you wouldn't need to sell off anywhere near that high a proportion to fund construction. Second, capital availability in the modern economy is such that there's way more money to be had by using debt financing and developing the whole block in one go.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

15 hours ago, SurgeHomes said:

We’ve experienced much success in Houston by collaborating with residents and future homebuyers to plan our communities in an interactive manner. Today, we want to push our plan one step further and ask for your comments on a draft rendering that normally would never be shown publicly but one which we use in-house with our architect to apply different materials and colors to determine the final exterior design. Of course, the attached rendering is plain and does not show landscaping or a beautiful finish and therefore builders don’t normally reveal this work-in-progress to the public. Since members of this forum have proven to be very generous in providing us with insightful comments, we’d like to ask for your recommendations for the exterior envelope and we’ll propose colored renderings. Please keep affordability in mind when making your suggestions because this is what helps our buyers become owners. We previously addressed, in this thread, that the rendering in the first post was just a draft and will change. Attached is a new, never-before-released, rendering of the exterior architecture of the building and we’d like your opinion on materials and colors. We want this condominium development, Hampton Heights, to contribute to the landscape of the Greater Heights and we welcome and value your collaboration in our effort to achieve this goal.

Hampton Heights.png

 

I actually like the first rendering better.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Is there anyway the stairwells could be moved to the back? I think the stairs being out front really cheapen the look of the front façade - it kinda gives it that seedy motel feel. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • The title was changed to Hampton Heights: Condo Building At 1800 W. 15th St.
  • The title was changed to Hampton Heights: Condominium Building At 1800 W. 15th St.

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...