Monday, May 5, 2008

Development: New Cosmopolitan on the Canal Rendering

Hot off the presses, here's a new canal-side rendering of Flaherty & Collins' mixed-use apartment complex Cosmopolitan on the Canal.
For convenience, here's the earlier rendering of the complex at the corner of Senate and Michigan.
What do you think?

7 comments:

bhorg said...

I like it. The Northwest quad needs more development like this. Those parking lots are such an eye sore.

CorrND said...

I'm still disappointed they didn't put retail on both sides of the courtyard, but at least they're pushing forward the canal-front restaurant concept. This is a great project.

The random "real" people around the rendering are awesome, particularly the guy in the rowboat that's sitting the wrong way to row!

Anthony Bullard said...

I like this project, but not necessarily the architecture. Like I said at property lines, at least it is not pretentious like the Hamilton Town Center, and makes an attempt to interact with canal-level foot traffic. Hopefully these retailers are successful and further canal retail develops in the short term, and more dense, urban infill projects come up along the canal in the long term.

Anthony Bullard said...

Not to be a downer, but I just went over the plans you gave us a link to at F&C's website, and when referencing the upper-lighter-colored area, it states that the material will be "hardie", as in hardie board. Is this for real? This does not seem like a commercial-use material. Does anyone else have any information on hardie board. I've looked and the materials for the other two "tiers" of the facade are a deep-maroon queen size brick for the middle section, and either limestone-colored or arctic white super emperor brick for the lowest section. Both are nice enough looking, and not EIFS, so that is good, but what is the deal with Hardie board?

Jason said...

At least it approaches the canal and the pedestrian traffic there. Was hoping for something a bit more dramatic. Oh well.

CorrND said...

The more I think about the use of the canal-front space on the north side of the courtyard, the more disappointed I get. I could almost understand if they used that side as a kind of general resident entrance for the complex, maybe with a "clubhouse" room or something. But those staircases are actually four private entrances.

I like the plan for the rest of the complex, but this is a huge wasted opportunity.

Anonymous said...

The "Hardie board" I've seen has been used to replace troweled exterior smooth stucco with batten boards. As far as I know it's a 50-year material like Hardiplank.

From a distance (i.e. several stories up) it is indistinguishable from real stucco. It's an economical and attractive modern material for new residential construction (and better than EIFS or Hardiplank lap siding for apartment/condo buildings IMO).