MICHAEL MOOSE DESIGN

Download a pdf version of the draft of the Brewery District Report. (The file is 5.2 MB, so allow time for a download.)
We will be adding a commentary section to the report, so please send you ideas, comments and corrections so they may be included.

 This is the last of the Transcripts. Group 4B thought Pleasant Street should allow a mix of cars and people and reminded us that the street was also a view corridor. They converted the Christian Moerlein building to a brewery and suggested a vast beer garden adjacent to it. They proposed housing for families south of the Market. They also proposed a grocery store that complemented Findlay Market and they suggested a heroic piece of architecture at McMicken to terminate the vista up Pleasant.

Group 4B was lead by Jeff Raser and Mark McKillip.
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Here is the fourth transcript of 5.  Group 4A called for making Pleasant a hidden pedestrian way, for family-oriented residential south of the Market, and for a business and entertainment area along McMicken that would connect to an new incline.  The group proposed to create a Market Square a large, multi-functional park in the block north of the Market.  The group also called for creating gateways at key locations on the perimeter of the district and for using large beer steins ( a la the Flying Pig sculptures) as branding elements for the district.

Group 4A was lead by Sari Lehtinen & Matthew Wirtz.

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Here is the third transcript of five. Group 2 called for making Pleasant a pedestrian way lined with pocket parks, creating a transit-oriented development along McMicken, and locating structured parking on the perimeter of the District. They also proposed creating a graceful and accessible pedestrian bridge across Liberty Street. Their most striking proposal was for a Restoration Academy that would teach residents how to renovate historic buildings.

Group 2 was lead by Steve Hampton and Graham Kalbli.

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The Happy
Albert Pyle, urban provocateur, author, friend and Director of the Mercantile Library has been kind enough to direct readers of  the library’s blog   Stacked  to our site. Give his site a look, especially yesterday’s entry in which a moose pulls a councilmember out of a hat. That is some kind of magic.

The Sad
I was saddened to find out yesterday that Peter Millard, a friend and mentor of mine at Yale, died yesterday. He made quite a splash in the architectural world with his designs for the Central Avenue and Whitney Avenue firehouses in New Haven.  The first was a heroic building on a unforgiving site; the second, fit quietly into a residential neighborhood.

When I asked him how to become an architect, he said, “You’ve got a walk through a lot of doors.” Obvious, I suppose, but at the time I thought drawing and imagination were the keys. In his class he presented us with working drawings of a building. He said we could redraw it as it stood, or redesign it. Whichever we chose, the building had to meet the budget. We had to work with structural, electrical, mechanical and cost consultants  to make sure our design would work in the real world. The class was worth several year’s experience in an architect’s office. It got us out of the theoretical and into the practical matter of making a piece of architecture out of brick, concrete, ducts and conduits. Peter opened my eyes to the possibility of making something extraordinary out of the ordinary.

He was a romantic, a realist and a seeker of the truth. We will not soon see his like. He will be missed.