Liner Buildings
Making Something out of NothingOne of the things that drives me crazy is when I’m walking around somewhere and I encounter a building with a giant blank wall set back some distance from the street. Wearing my capitalist hat, I see these kinds of “nothing” spaces and I just cringe at the lost income that it represents for the property owner. Wearing my urbanist hat, I see these kind of spaces and feel frustrated by the lost opportunity. Where there could be life, there is void.
One of the most ridiculous examples of this can be found on the side of the main building of the MFAH. If you haven’t been to the Museum of Fine Art, you should, it’s fantastic. One nice thing is that it’s located directly at the Musuem District Station on the light rail, so if the train is an option for you then you can get there without dealing with parking.
However, if you do arrive using the southbound train you’ll find this blank wall across the street.
Obviously the Museum needs to have carefully regulated light and air, and they need high security, so I understand why they don’t have secondary entries on every side of the building. That said, this giant void space is just begging for some life to come fill it it. It wouldn’t take much. For maybe 10 grand you could frame-in some simple, small art display spaces against the liner wall, and then you could turn around and rent these as “mini-galleries” for local artists and craftsmen to showcase and sell their work.
In five-minute scribble form it might look something like this:
There are opportunities for large businesses to incorporate these kinds of incubator spaces all over the city. Whether they’re art incubators (appropriate for the museum district and the MFAH) or start-up business spaces, there are blank-wall-voids all over our urban core, and it’s foolish not to use them for something.
Turning these voids into dirt cheap incubator spaces would not only represent a dramatic improvement in walkability, it would also be an economic boon. Any time you lower the barrier to entry you help spark entrepreneurial activity. Being able to get a “major street” address for your company is a big move, even if you’re only renting 150 sqft or so.
Obviously we can’t even start an experiment like this without the City getting out of the way… just one more reason to push for the removal of setbacks and parking regs in our urban core.
Categories: live, think
Tags: art, creativity, economy, entrepreneurship, mfah, Urbanism, walkability
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7 Comments
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Great idea! I agree with you here 100% about setbacks as well.
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I see TREES and GRASS and “Line of Site” for the bike-ped population in that set back that are very important for our continued existence.
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First: there is no grass there, just ivy.
Second: Those trees aren’t big enough to provide shade, and aren’t between the street and the sidewalk, so they do nothing to protect the pedestrian.
Third: Cyclists shouldn’t be on the sidewalk or the ivy/grass, they should be in the street.
Fourth: Bringing something ‘active’ other than a blank wall up to the sidewalk catches drivers attentions and signals them to drive slower and pay more attention — the best protection pedestrians and cyclists can have is cautious and alert drivers.
Fifth: Who said anything about line of sight? There would still be the normal visibility triangle at the corners, the same as if you were riding downtown.
Now, I’ve ridden my bike through downtown quite a bit, and walked around downtown even more. At no point was my life threatened by a lack of setbacks.
Sixth: Are you suggesting that the “green” space itself is important? I bet you $100 that nobody has ever made use of that supposed “green” space. It’s just there to look nice as you drive by, and to be taken by the city for future road widenings.
The only purpose a setback serves is to let the city take your land to widen the road without having to destroy a building. That is THE reason they were created in the 30′s.
The way to make proper green space that is actually USEFUL is to take all that wasted ‘token’ grass and consolidate it into a whole block that’s a park, not to require that building owners arbitrarily leave a faux yard in front of an office tower.
Stop, think, go to the site, look around, tell me if that block would be more enjoyable as-is or with a bunch of micro art galleries behind a 12 foot sidewalk.
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Now that you mention setbacks,
I have learned that anytime I find my economist self and my urbanist self offended at the same time, the most likely culprit is govt.
Awesome idea. Looks much better/urban/interesting/useful. I don’t see anything not to like, although you might get some bitching about cutting down the trees.
If they were semi-permanent structures would it be okay to build within the setback?
Hell, make it a plaza around the trees and hold little art fairs/farmers markets there.
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>>Third: Cyclists shouldn’t be on the sidewalk or the ivy/grass, they should be in the street.
Maybe. Where is the bike lane? I consider myself a pretty avid biker, but I’m not going to bike in the street in Houston – certainly not for commuting purposes, certainly not on a weekday, and certainly not if I am biking with my wife or children. It is just not safe enough and there is not enough awareness of bikers in Houston.
If you want more people to take up biking you have to make it even easier than it already is, and this does not mean telling people to bike on Westheimer or Main St. Good sidewalks can be a good alternative in some cases.
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@mike
Cyclists can’t be on sidewalks. They danger pedestrians.
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I’m not a rider, but it seems like the risks to pedestrians (in areas other than the Museum District or near high-foot-traffic areas downtown) are safer than the risks to cyclists from vehicles. Running into someone can cause MAYBE some broken bones at the worst, but a collision or sideswipe with/by a vehicle can kill you.
Of course it’s far easier for cyclists to ride on a consistent and flat surface like roads as opposed to broken sidewalks outside of downtown, but if there’s no bike lane cyclists are always taking a risk on the street.