A silk hat

Here is the conceptual rendering for the Albert Street drive-way, proposed by the owner of the St. Charles Hotel (at left. Click to enlarge)



Vague illustrations that make the viewer unclear (Ie-"what is that?" "where is the green vapor coming from?" "why is that one person translucent?", etc.) are increasingly becoming staples of modern architecture--usually to hide how cheap the finished product will be when it's actually built. (The architect hired to draw this designed the Webb Site condos on Webb Place. The renderings for that looked nice, too, yet didn't show the mock clap-board vinyl siding that clads part of the building's extorior today).

But there's one thing that still shines through and through: if this were to actually be built (and I don't think it would, since it was only drawn up hastily to placate City Council, Centre Venture, Exchange District BIZ, and the public), it would be just another driveway across the sidewalk on Albert Street, with Modernist features added that only succeed at banality and at being completely out of scale with the Exchange District.

Let's see the technical drawings--the actual blueprint. How about the actual plans for the St. Charles itself?

Wait, more than a year later, the "developer" hasn't seen to those being drawn up yet.