Academy Place

Here are some sketches from Academy Place, also in south Starkville:

The homes are pretty typical to what you see in this part of town. Sort of a cross between the local vernacular and what you normally see in Starkville's recent subdivisions. And here is a site plan of the earlier phases of the subdivision:

The more recent phases of the subdivision are your typical single family detached housing that you see all over the rest of the south side of town, which I haven't drawn here. If there were some sort of connection between this subdivision and Timbercove to the south, people would have a nice alternate route to Mongtomery Street for walking or bicycling.

Annabella Subdivision

The other day I made some sketches of Annabella Subdivision in south Starkville:

I like the character of the buildings, and overall it seems to be a pretty nice development. The buildings create a nice sense of enclosure around the development's main street. This street feels more like a shared courtyard than an actual street. This could be because almost everything about the buildings is facing the street--large windows, doors, porches, balconies. Now if only they could have finished the enclosure by adding a building to the east end of the street.

Building Nicknames

Leon Krier writes about nicknames and modernist architecture in The Architecture of Community. One example I can think of is the Clinton Library in Little Rock. Most people who have seen it say it looks like a giant single-wide trailer. I remember that the firm responsible for its design gave a lecture on how they came up with the library's design, but I don't really remember much of it. I think it mostly had to do with sustainability, views, and maintaining a unified waterfront park.

from www.clintonpresidentialcenter.org

More traditional-looking architecture can also be given nicknames. I remember hearing names for the Victor Emmanuel II monument in Rome such as "the Wedding Cake," "the Typewriter," and "the English Soup."

from shaker.roma.it

Evolving Buildings

I've been reading a bit through How Buildings Learn: What happens after they're  built by Stewart Brand. It made me think about some buildings I've seen change over time. I found a couple of examples around town of buildings that used to be restaurants and are now something else. I remember back in the day this ProGraphics used to be a Krystal. The building is still shaped the same but the exterior and interior have been changed completely. There's also some brave person jogging down the city's main street at 5pm.



Here's an old Wendy's. I have no idea what the interior looks like, but the exterior has barely changed. The new Wendy's is right next to this building.