Kinects
Synopsis
Urban buildings need to innovate to find ways to be more than one building
Kinects is an urban lookout tower.
Structural engineers no longer prefer that buildings be built like pyramids, getting smaller as they get taller. The best urban views are at the top. Kinects gets wider as it gets taller. It has significantly more units on the top half than the bottom half.
The glass box look out and outdoor viewing platform is perched 400’ above the streets below. Everyone in the 344 rental
apartments (including integrated low income housing), that weave between the curtain wall clad concrete legs of the look out tower have access to the top, and the best of all views.
Kinects is low scale urban housing.
The scale of the immediate neighborhood is low. Directly across the street is a 6 story residential building. Kinects matches it with four floors of urban housing perched atop a two story retail base clad in warm horizontal terra cotta. Angled window bays focus eyes to the sidewalk.
Kinects is an urban Pocket Park.
Immediately adjacent to Kinects on the south is an historic one story building housing a restaurant that enjoys a small out door space on the north. Kinects slides over a bit to more than double the size of the outdoor space. To reflect sunlight into the existing restaurant, the side of Kinects in this area will be painted with pollution eating white titanium dioxide.
Kinects has an innovative structural system that eliminated 40% of the concrete normally found in a building of this scale. The city required the design be proven by a peer review process involving another engineering firm that took over a year.
Kinects will accomplish LEED silver, and is striving for gold.
