To Boldly Go Beyond Vanilla
Arlington Pushes Developers to Build With Style

By Daniela Deane
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 14, 2007

Arlington County wins raves across the country for its smart-growth strategy of concentrating development around Metro stations and encouraging a walkable lifestyle. But the design of its buildings can leave much to be desired.

From the canyon of stark gray high-rises in Crystal City to the monotonous beige wall of concrete that is Ballston, the county's architecture often doesn't reflect the area's national prominence.

"We need more buildings that sing," said Roberto Moranchel, the county's chief architect and urban designer. "We've got some now that barely talk."

"Look at this one," he said on a recent tour, pointing to Randolph Towers in Ballston, a beige high-rise apartment complex built in 1986. "It looks like something out of the Soviet Union."

So officials have embarked on a year-long mission to inject some distinctive style into the architecture of the 26-square-mile county of 200,000 residents. And they'd like residents to help make that happen.

The Arlington County Board is sponsoring a four-part series of speakers and public discussions on how to raise the bar on architectural design in the county.

The third installment of the series, "Making Green Beautiful," will be from 7 to 9 tonight at the Rosslyn Spectrum Theatre. Architects Travis Price III and Susan C. Piedmont-Palladino will kick off the public discussion by exploring how to make buildings environmentally friendly -- and pretty.

"We want people to be made aware of the different possibilities in architecture and design," County Board Chairman Paul Ferguson (D) said. "We want the community to push the developers to be bolder with their designs."

Ferguson said developers tend to be cautious -- and the results haven't always been to the county's liking.

"Some citizens like one style; others like another. So the developers play it safe and go with plain," Ferguson said. "We want our buildings to be more distinctive. We've got enough vanilla."

Ferguson said county officials would like to have community input early in the review process "because the applicants want to come to the board with something the community likes, with enthusiastic support, or at the very least, minimal opposition."

The well-traveled Moranchel, who said he doesn't understand why Arlington can't have some of the greatest architecture in the world, said part of the problem is that developers "don't want to spend more money."

"More beautiful often means more expensive," he said.

Anthony Fusarelli, an urban designer with the county's planning department, said that taken by themselves, some of the plainer buildings in Arlington are not "that bad."

He cited Fairfax Drive in Ballston, where many of the buildings simply look too alike in what has been dubbed the "beige of Ballston," without any distinctive architectural features -- such as curved facades, angles, varying materials and window sizes -- to distinguish one from another.

"When you put them all together, it can be really monotonous," Fusarelli said. "By having more variety, the buildings can complement each other."

Moranchel said the county has battled with developers to get them to take more chances with their designs.

He negotiates with them, trying to get them to use different materials and textures, varying shapes and a variety of colors to reduce the monotony. He also pushes for bigger and nicer walkways and open green spaces in exchange for increased square footage, and pedestrian- rather than car-friendly entrances.

Moranchel pointed to the Clarendon, a luxury rental building on North Herndon Street in Clarendon, as an example of what the county would like developers to emulate. He cited the building's metal canopies, varying window sizes, and different materials and colors as the kind of architectural details that can make a structure more pleasing.

He said another good example is the Ballston Point building at Wilson Boulevard and Glebe Road -- the entryway to Ballston -- with its soaring curved glass entry.

"I tell them, 'This is the legacy you're leaving for your kids,' " Moranchel said. "It's important."

Moranchel said the new Kettler Capitals Iceplex, built atop the Ballston Common Mall parking garage, also is an example of innovative and striking design. The complex, where the Washington Capitals practice, has mirrored glass and a diagonal edge in a mixture of shapes, textures and colors.

"They made something beautiful out of something ugly," he said.

John Shooshan, president of the Shooshan Co., a Ballston-based mixed-use developer, said he doesn't agree that the buildings in Ballston are too plain. Shooshan is the developer of Liberty Center, a four-building office and residential complex being built across the street from the Ballston Common Mall.

"Architecture is like art; it's very subjective," he said.

Shooshan said that the county wants to push the edge in architecture but that developers have to keep an eye on the bottom line or risk failure.

"Sometimes their frame of reference is Barcelona or Paris," Shooshan said. "We're in Arlington. We have to weigh that, too. Many of our clients work with the federal government. They're not making a million dollars a year."

Shooshan said that the cost of land and construction has risen rapidly and that developers need to do cost-benefit analyses to make their projects work.

"God forbid you spend an extra million on design and then you can't get it sold," he said.

"Landowners want to extract their pound of flesh," Shooshan said. "Then there's the special interests you have to take into account -- affordable housing, arts, public safety, transportation. Then you overlay world-class architecture on it. You can't do it all."

Shooshan said there has to be a "reality check between what you can build and what you can sell."

The architecture speaker series started in October with a presentation by architect Enrique Norten, founder and principal of New York/Mexico City-based TEN Arquitectos.

Norten described Arlington's master plan of Metro-oriented growth as "brilliant" but said it wasn't reflected in the quality of design of the buildings. He called the county's architecture "worrisome."

In January, the series looked at the security challenges in building in a post-September 11 world.

The final presentation this fall will examine accessibility.

Lee Quill, principal with Georgetown-based Cunningham+Quill Architects, said he welcomes Arlington's push to get the community involved in the design process and its commitment to improve the architecture in the county.

At the same time, he said, people need to recognize the credentials and experience the architects and designers working on these projects bring to the table.

"I want to be able to do what we do in the best way we can," Quill said. "We want to try not to dumb down projects by a committee process. We can't have our projects designed by committee and influenced by multiple dialogues."