Design
Center Sets Criteria for Future Civic Buildings
The City Paper
By William Williams
August 06, 2002
The Nashville Civic Design Center has released a set of recommended general
urban design criteria for future civic buildings downtown that should act
as a instructional tool to assist in the shaping of the city’s core,
according to center officials.
John Houghton, acting
executive director for the Design Center, said the process to assemble
guidelines began last
March. Center officials worked
on the project on-and-off for about three months, he added.
“
We focused on governmental buildings, churches and schools,” Houghton
said. “The guidelines are tools for the community to use in evaluating
sites for proposed new public buildings.”
Houghton said the criteria focuses on locating buildings on downtown’s high and low topography, making public space, defining streets and using civic buildings as focal points. “ The criteria capture and record historical [civic building development], but they also look forward,” he said.
The completion of
the guidelines, which can be viewed on the center’s
Web site (www.civicdesigncenter.org), coincides with tonight’s
public meeting (to be held at 6:30 p.m. at the Renaissance Hotel)
involving the
U.S. General Services Administration and its effort to build a new
federal courthouse downtown. The final site choices are the block
bounded by Church
and Commerce streets and Seventh and Eighth avenues north, and the
land on which the Nashville Thermal Transfer Corp. facility sits.
In addition to the federal courthouse, other civic buildings that
might be constructed downtown in the near future include a new convention
center, fire hall and elementary school.
Seab Tuck, a member of the center’s board of directors, said the guidelines recognize that prominent civic buildings often look and function better when there is public space, such as a park or plaza, between the street and the buildings themselves. “ The criteria start to set some parameters and guides for civic buildings,” Tuck said. “Your more prominent buildings sort of have the right to step back and create [open space].” Fellow board member Jeff Ockerman participated in the committee that established the criteria. “ I describe [the guidelines] as educational tools for the general public,” Ockerman said. “The guidelines will do a lot to help generate discussion.”