THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, December 10, 1994 TAG: 9412100246
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B01 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY ALEX MARSHALL, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Long : 104 lines
Galina Tahchieva bent over the thin sheets of paper on her drawing table. In her hands, East Ocean View's numbered Bay streets had become narrow alleys. Its long blocks had become short ones, broken up by cross streets.
Pleasant Avenue, which bisects the Bayfront area, boasted a new traffic circle that doubled as a park. Long, new avenues ran toward the Bay and widened at the end for better views. Strips of greenery were mixed among the streets, creating long, narrow parks.
Will this be the new East Ocean View in five or 10 years? Maybe. Maybe not. Tahchieva's plan was one of a dozen that architects working for Andres Duany came up with Friday in a day of creative brainstorming.
Over the next few days, Duany and his staff will critique, study and discuss the plans in hopes of merging them into a single vision by Tuesday afternoon.
The brainstorming format - called a charrette - is a way of cramming the designing of a neighborhood into a single week. It emphasizes cooperation, quick feedback and intense work.
While his staff drew plans Friday, Duany met with redevelopment officials, politicians, residents and city staff members to discuss the neighborhood's future. His role resembled that of the head chef of a big restaurant, who seldom touches a pot or pan. He set the overall course while his staff sketched designs.
A frequently discussed issue was whether to spare any of the East Ocean View homes scheduled to be torn down to make way for redevelopment.
Nothing firm was decided Friday.
The team's dozen plans, pinned on a wall at the end of the day, differed dramatically. One was a mini-Paris or Washington, with two diagonal streets cutting across a grid to meet at a central plaza. Another was a set of curvy streets that meandered around the dunes. Others were more simple grids, but with details like parks, circles and jogs in the street.
But the plans shared common ground. Most turned the long Bay streets into alleys. Most pushed homes back behind East Ocean View Avenue to make views and the beach more public. All were variations on a grid, which is a more urban type of street pattern.
Friday's sessions were held in the central room of the Senior Center at 600 East Ocean View Ave. With its wood floors and high ceiling, the room had the feel of a small gymnasium.
On one side, architects worked at seven long tables. On the other, Duany talked and listened. In this series of discussions held at intervals throughout the day, the architect encountered legal, political and technical difficulties that he will try to resolve or sidestep in the coming days.
He talked with traffic engineers about how narrow streets could be and still meet state regulations. He talked with residents about the fairness of tearing down homes. He talked with development officials about how many low-priced homes they could sell without driving away upper-income buyers.
Such discussions usually take place during months by telephone or during repeated visits to a site. But in Duany's charrette process, they happen in one intensive, weeklong gathering.
The ideas discussed included:
Turning a strip shopping center on the west side of Shore Drive into a mini-Main Street for the area by cutting in a street beside it.
Whether small hotels should be allowed along the beachfront.
Whether streets should be made of brick or concrete.
Most of the plans fit within the framework of Duany's ``neo-traditional'' or ``new urbanism'' brand of architecture. Less-expensive condominiums would be on the same street as half-million-dollar homes. A hardware store or dry cleaner might be within walking distance. Homes, perhaps with front porches, would be close to streets. The code governing development would allow bed-and-breakfast inns.
Planners agreed that the new neighborhood should be open, not a walled-off enclave. This way, officials said, it could serve as a model for development in the rest of Ocean View. Duany, who heads a Miami-based firm with his wife, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, brought to Norfolk a team that included eight architects, a marketer, two artists and a landscape architect.
The marketer, Todd Zimmerman, predicted which types of housing would appeal to which types of buyers. In a session Thursday, he sorted potential buyers into groups by income and taste. One he labeled ``the New Bohemians.'' These are young professionals or artists - with money - who, said Zimmerman, ``take over an area and make it safe for the upper middle class.'' ILLUSTRATION: Staff photo by MARTIN SMITH-RODDEN/
Designers, residents and Norfolk officials put their heads together
at the charrette Friday at the Senior Center at 600 East Ocean View
Ave. Architect Andres Duany and his team will try to combine the
ideas into a single vision and present it Tuesday.
WHAT'S A CHARRETTE?
According to architect Andres Duany's staff, the word charrette,
originally a French word meaning ``little cart,'' came into
architecture through architecture students laboring on final
projects. At the Ecoles des Beaux Arts in Paris during the 19th
century, professors circulated with little carts to collect final
drawings. The term ``charrette'' became a buzzword for students'
efforts to finish their projects. Under Duany, the word has come to
mean the intensive, usually weeklong design sessions in which
architects, city officials and residents come together to design
part of a town.
KEYWORDS: EAST OCEAN VIEW REDEVELOPMENT CHARRETTE by CNB