haltcatchfire
Senior Member
You’ve seen the exterior and interior finishes?
- Thread starter MichaelS
- Start date
You’ve seen the exterior and interior finishes?
YourBoy007
Active Member
Yeah I'm from the year 2025 when this thing gets completed
UrbanWarrior
Senior Member
Ummm they just shot up two floors in less than a week. So I’ll give it 2023.
JWhite
New Member
I drive up over the 4th flyover the other day and it looks cool seeing a building there.
UrbanWarrior
Senior Member
YourBoy007
Active Member
Sigh. Another 5 over 1. Whoopie! That lot deserves better.
Silence&Motion
Senior Member
It's next to an onramp and across the street from a gas station. I think this is a pretty good use of space, all things considered.
The Familia
Active Member
What’s a 5 over 1? Considering the lot and location, I’m happy anything is being built! I have very low expectations this will look anything like the renderings, but as long as it looks even remotely decent it will be a win.
haltcatchfire
Senior Member
I assume it’s young people lingo or slang for five storeys of residential over one storey of something else. Silly kids.
Platopos
Active Member
It's basically the easiest/cheapest building that can be approved based on a common technicality of the fire codes in North America. 5 wooden floors and base concrete floor with the insinuation that if the fire code wasn't the way it was, all 6 floors would be wooden.
Mountain Man
Senior Member
It's a common term for that type of building actually, moreso in the US.
Silence&Motion
Senior Member
They're very controversial in the US, where they've been used to redevelop a lot of inner-city neighbourhoods. A good example is the Oak Lawn/Old East Dallas area of Dallas (basically, the area of the inner-city north of Dallas' central business district). Just by looking at Google Maps' satellite view, you can see all the massive block-sized wood-frame apartment buildings. People consider them bland, cheap, and monotonous. They're not necessarily wrong.
However, IMHO, this is another example of a building form getting blamed for what is essentially a problem with the streetscape. American cities in particular have no appetite to change the car-dependent design of their streets. It doesn't matter if it's "towers-in-the-park", "new urbanism", or the "five-over-one". If you build it on the side of a stroad, it's going to look depressing and monotonous.
Thankfully for Calgary, while our inner-city is also getting rebuilt with five-over-ones, our road network is better and we don't have the same history of slum clearance that have left huge swaths of empty space that can be developed into mega-blocks. Flyover Block shares little in common with the kinds of five-over-one developments that are generating controversy in the US.
However, IMHO, this is another example of a building form getting blamed for what is essentially a problem with the streetscape. American cities in particular have no appetite to change the car-dependent design of their streets. It doesn't matter if it's "towers-in-the-park", "new urbanism", or the "five-over-one". If you build it on the side of a stroad, it's going to look depressing and monotonous.
Thankfully for Calgary, while our inner-city is also getting rebuilt with five-over-ones, our road network is better and we don't have the same history of slum clearance that have left huge swaths of empty space that can be developed into mega-blocks. Flyover Block shares little in common with the kinds of five-over-one developments that are generating controversy in the US.
MissingMiddle
Active Member
Uhh, the entire East Village/River's District?
Silence&Motion
Senior Member
Touche. I guess I should say, Calgary's inner-city is not the vast swath of empty dirt lots and strip malls, crisscrossed by expressways that you find in the US. The redevelopment of the East Village and River's District is very different than what's happening in Oak Lawn and Old East Dallas.
adamyyc
Active Member
I do think that 5 over 1 can lead to the same banal building. I think we’re beginning to see that somewhat in areas that are starting to get a high concentration of these types of buildings (Marda Loops as an example).
There are some nice 5 over 1 buildings, but it mostly comes down to the quality of the exterior material, which is often lacking in this type of building because the whole point of this form of building is to reduce costs.
There are some nice 5 over 1 buildings, but it mostly comes down to the quality of the exterior material, which is often lacking in this type of building because the whole point of this form of building is to reduce costs.