Living on Podiums

Landscaping can blind to reality. This 'affordable' housing is sitting high above the parking beneath. There is no attempt to even partially place the parking below grade. You can see right through the parking to the other side. A ten foot grey concrete wall, interspersed with open steel grills looking into the carpark, greets the neighbors walking by. The entrance resembles the bars on a prison cell. Would you want this in your neighborhood? Would the residents isolated within this structure feel moved to interact with the surrounding community?

Large scale development in American cities in the last half of the Twentieth Century was characterized by buildings surrounded by acres of surface parking. Slowly, it became apparent that this approach was inimical to human interaction and the health of the city. The walkable city was disappearing, crime thrived and those that could afford to escaped to the suburbs.

New trends arose which demanded a new approach:

A desire to recreate the walkable cities of the past,
Rising cost of land that made surface parking less profitable,
A reaction against the isolation of suburban life combined with a commute that increasingly ate into the day,
Rising gas prices

With increasing interest in city living and the need to make better use of the expensive land, development began to increase in density and parking moved beneath the new structures. Although a laudible improvement over the former situation, many of these 'podium' developments, with parking beneath, created their own obstacles to an attractive city life. In effect, many of them took on the appearance of fortresses set down among 'unfriendly natives'. They evidenced no interest in integrating with the surrounding neighborhood.

Podiums in building parlance are raised concrete structures upon which developments are constructed with parking for the future development located beneath. The podium is generally about 10-12 feet above the finished ground surface to enable vehicles of various heights to park beneath. Such podiums can be constructed directly on the natural ground surface or at a lower level above basement space cut out of the earth. The latter are more expensive due to the cost of the additional grading, but what a difference in the human experience. Even grade level podium footings can create a positive experience if the residential development extends beyond the podium structure to the street frontage.

Other Podium Approaches

The images that follow show other approaches to interfacing podium residential developments with their surrounding communities. They range from virtually no effort toward such integration to a measure of sensitivity to the surroundings and an evident desire not to divide the residents from the community in which they are located. See below for graphic representation of podium development alternatives.

Podium for Seniors	Can good design create a false front?

The management is looking for new older tenants (note inset in upper left corner of image). This is located across the street from a college. But what is the message here? That entrance is certainly not very welcoming. Seniors who have trouble climbing stairs can not enter the building at the main entrance. Are seniors to fear their community and hide away in a fortress looking down on the neighbors?	This developer paid for quality design. Nevertheless, do fake windows (alcoves) and doors make up for the lack of the real thing at street level? Not a single tenant has direct access to the outside along this entire street frontage. Pedestrians on the sidewalk may find it more interesting than a blank wall, but integration into the surrounding community was not a high priority for the architects.

Digging for success or Podiums over Partial Basement Garages

Each of these projects involves the moving of the parking beneath the podium at least partially below grade. Each also enables the bottom floor residents to directly access the neighborhood. The developments are arranged in an order reflecting their success in achieving these goals. Although an improvement over the previous above grade approaches, the street frontage appearance (the linear ventilation grills combined with the dropoff to the half basement containing the cars) of the first two examples tends to create a barrier separating the developments from the neighborhood.

The development below is built upon a podium above a below-grade garage full of cars. There are ventilation openings with metal grills (note the lower left corner of the image) between the individual unit access stairways, but they are well camouflaged through the design and landscaping. The designers seemed to have found a means to provide adequate ventilation with smaller openings in the garage wall between the stairways. Unlike the above examples, there is no vertical dropoff immediately in front of the building.

Graphic Representation of Podium Development Alternatives

The podium graphic representations are arranged in order of preference related to their impact on the urban environment. The 'grade level' approach shown at the top of this page has the most adverse impact on the community. The 'concealed below grade' podium is the most preferred.

Grade Level Podium	Below Grade Podium	Concealed At Grade Podium	Concealed Below Grade Podium