Baltimore architects fuse contemporary with historical for city’s future look

BALTIMORE (Map, News) - If the Bromo-Seltzer clock tower defined 19th-century Baltimore architecture, and Camden Yards and the National Aquarium signified the 20th century, what will be the signature look of the 21st-century skyline?

“I think the best is yet to come,” said C. William Struever, CEO of Struever Bros. Eccles & Rouse. “I think there’s great interest in good architecture. I think the Four Seasons and Legg Mason buildings are going to be wonderful on the Baltimore skylines.”

Those projects, under development by Struever’s firm, are among a new wave of major contemporary buildings coming to Baltimore. Struever is also working on Harbor Point, a mixed residential, commercial and office complex near Fells Point, and Turner Development Group is working on Westport, another mixed-use development at an old industrial area on the Middle Branch of the Patapsco River.

“I think it’s getting way more metropolitan,” said Patrick Turner, president of Turner Development. “What we’d like to do is integrate the feel of the old, but bring in [a] look of the new.”

One of those projects may become Baltimore’s signature building of the 21st century, said Adam Blumenthal, executive director of the Baltimore Architecture Foundation.

Mario Schack has been a member of the city’s Urban Design and Architecture Review panel, a group of architecture experts reviewing major city developments, for more than 20 years. He said new development is focused on areas like Harbor East, but the look of the city would be defined by development along corridors such as Pratt and Charles streets.

The overall effect of united, street-level changes would alter Baltimore’s future look far more than a single project, he said.

“It’s less the function of one building that gives the city identity,” he said. “The water and the harbor give it an identity, but [with] so many other good things happening right now, you have to look at the city as a whole. It’s really the parts that make up the whole.”

Mayor Sheila Dixon agreed new architecture should respect the city’s roots.

“You don’t want to go all modern and eliminate the basis of the city,” she said. “It’s important that as we go forward, the look of our neighborhoods reflects what that community is about.”

That evolving mix of old and new may make the city more distinctive than either could alone.

“I believe that cities with a strong history have an idiosyncratic presence that no signature building can duplicate,” said Klaus Philipsen, president of design firm ArchPlan. “If you link that history with cool, hip buildings, you have the perfect mix.”

acahall@baltimoreexaminer.com

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