Thursday, September 23, 2010

Failure



This building is called the Stoa and it was finished just before I was here last summer. It was created as an all-in-one hang out, meaning it has a restaurant for dinner, a bar for drinks after dinner, and a club. The area in front of it is used as the fresh food marketplace on Saturdays, but the Stoa has now forced it to end 2+ hours early so that the parking lot is available. Unfortunately, the municipality wasn’t able to stop the construction of this monstrosity in the middle of the historic core of the city.

I understand that development of the area near the buffer zone needs to start somewhere, and private investment is what will help trigger this… But building anything in the old city deserves some character and should at least acknowledge its surroundings. A design review process would be nice at the very least. So much for a harmonious coexistence of past and present.

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