04-09-2016, 07:08 PM
(04-08-2016, 03:11 PM)tomh009 Wrote: In order to not have any retaining wall, the grade on the site would need to follow (the fairly steep) grade on the street. It makes the building design much more challenging. For perspective, I did some rough estimating of the retaining wall length using Google Maps. It looks like there would be two roughly 50m sections on either side of the entrance lanes. Each one of those is about 50% primarily greenery, and 50% (25m) of primarily concrete. That's about 20 seconds (x2) of walking past concrete at a moderate walking speed of 5 km/h.
As for second floor access, escalators are an simple way to make access to other floors easier. And not that expensive in the big picture.
Saying its only 50 m on either side sacrifices 100 meters of urban public realm and we should in no way be compromising our street facing urban realm. I won't give reason as to why as there are reams of content out there to do it for me... a sampling of recent articles found on the matter scanning my twitter feed for 3 or so minutes:
http://www.vancitybuzz.com/2016/03/six-s...reetfight/
http://www.citylab.com/cityfixer/2016/04...=SFTwitter
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZijyXVlWuak&feature=youtu.be&app=desktop
http://www.citylab.com/design/2015/12/pu...=SFTwitter
http://www.archdaily.com/580467/inclusiv...ce=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter
http://thewalrus.ca/tv-cities-for-people-not-just-cars/