Object, fabric, precinct: Three ways buildings make a city

OPINION

BY KIM TANZER

Recently the City has focused its attention on housing—its quantity, quality, and cost. But real cities offer much more than housing. Among the elements of a good city are significant public buildings. Today I will describe my three current favorites: Hotel Eleo, the Santa Fe College Blount Center, and Curia on the Drag.

This selection may surprise some. Like all good buildings in cities, they contribute to our larger urban whole, but in different ways: All are open to the public, but their audiences vary. They all occupy challenging sites. While their construction budgets varied widely, they are all well-built, using appropriate materials and thoughtful detailing. They are different stylistically, and while two are new, one comprises a series of modest renovations.

Using my architect’s vocabulary, one is an “object” building, one is a “fabric” building, and one creates a “field” or “precinct.” As I describe each, I will consider each building’s location within the city, its exterior as perceived by those passing by, and its interior as understood by those who use it.

Hotel Eleo, designed by Alfonso Architects, is a free-standing, sculptural, object building. As part of the Shands Hospital complex triangle bordered by Archer Road, SW 13^th Street, and SW 16^th Avenue, it holds its own among dozens of enormous institutional buildings. Six stories tall, its thin, sinuous form protects the healthcare complex from a busy four-lane road, shaping a tranquil oasis for patients, visitors, and healthcare workers. It is simultaneously a beacon and a barrier.

The major entrance, under an east-facing portico, welcomes pedestrians and valet-parked cars.  The hotel essentially has three “fronts,” and it helps visitors find their way inside while offering appropriate faces to its exterior (the busy street) and its interior (the water-filled oasis).

The Hotel Eleo presents a tough yet elegant public face in this tumultuous location. The street-facing walls, playfully articulated with an abstract rhythm, are faced with core-ten steel panels, weathered to a deep rust color. The inward-facing walls are ribbons of glass. Inside, the lobby is bright, colorful, and minimal. The restaurant opens onto a north-facing patio, overlooking two lakes.  

The Blount Center, at the corner of University Avenue and NW 6^th Street, is a fabric building. Not intended to stand out, it presents a sensitively designed, self-effacing wall along University Avenue. It echoes the scale and materials of the four-story apartment building across the street, and one can imagine new buildings—similar in size and materials–being built just next door. 

The Blount Center also occupies a challenging site. Designed by Harvard Jolly Architects, the building has consciously attempted to bridge the divide between the city’s most public street, University Avenue, and one of its most sensitive neighborhoods, historically African-American Pleasant Street. It does this by making its primary entrance to the north, addressing Pleasant Street, and incorporating ample parking into a space that doubles as an event space, open to the local community. A secondary, trellised entry opens west, to the 6^th Street bike trail, while surprisingly and interestingly, no primary public entrances face University Avenue.

The brick exterior is traditional in its architectural language. The Blount Center is a new building, but its materials and detailing align it with the City’s oldest commercial structures. Inside, a generous lobby, public spaces on the first floor, an art gallery on the second floor, and a public balcony on the top floor are designed for flexible contemporary uses.  

Object and fabric buildings are found in all cities, and they often complement each other through contrast. My third example, a precinct, is less common.  I think of this building type like chess pieces on a board. In a precinct, objects work in relation to, or in spatial tension with, each other, and the space between the buildings is just as important as the buildings themselves.

Curia on the Drag works this way. Curia is a compound of three existing buildings, a new solar-roofed trellis, a food truck, a lawn, and a parking area. It faces NW 6^th Street and can be entered off the street or through the parking lot in the center of the compound. Because it is near several popular neighborhoods, many people walk or bike to visit.

Curia has evolved over a decade, carefully shaped by its owner Nick Moskowitz. The precinct has responded creatively to changing tenants, tastes, and the challenges of COVID-19. Visitors, coming for lunch, coffee, yoga, shopping, or to listen to music, drift from one venue to another. The connecting parking lot works like a pedestrian plaza. A breezeway connects two buildings and provides an entry sequence and outdoor seating.

The buildings have been carefully renovated, and a skillful paint job has done much of the work.  Inside, a delightful series of display vitrines and carved surfaces create quirky attractions near the coffee counter, and an art gallery has recently morphed into a co-working space.

I especially enjoy thinking of these three projects in combination, because they are so different from each other. Rather than creating a homogenous, monotonous cityscape, they contribute to a diverse built ecosystem. This is an important quality in any vibrant city, and these buildings, together, exemplify Gainesville at its best.

Kim Tanzer lives in Gainesville. She is a former UF architecture professor, who was also dean of the University of Virginia School of Architecture.

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