Queen City Tower / 2021. Cincinnati, OH
The Queen City Tower redefines present-day skyscraper design through the usage of contextual references to local architectural heritage. This mixed-use tower containing retail, office, and residential programs along with community-building roof terraces creates a new icon for the city of Cincinnati, speaking to the city’s past while looking forward towards a bright future.
As globalization homogenizes the world’s cities, this project envisions a different future that pulls from the strengths of humanity’s past. Every place should be culturally and visually distinct and should not forget local history in the building of a local future. This building captures Cincinnati’s 1800s prominence, industrially, culturally, and in terms of the American Italianate architectural style.
The building is designed as a series of stacked volumes of smaller Italianate buildings, separated by loggie. These buildings each represent the many midrise Italianate structures found in the nearby Over the Rhine neighborhood. The base of the building is rusticated, with hierarchical entranceways, and the roof is inspired by the Basilica Palladiana and the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall.
This project also envisions a future without urban highways. Downtown Cincinnati is suffocated by highways, such as I-71, which separates the city from the waterfront. This highway should be filled in, creating new urban development sites, a critical mass of urban activity, and walkable connectivity. This will also reduce urban pollution while limiting and relegating urban sprawl, and preserving natural lands in favor of dense, justified, efficient, sustainable development. The Queen City Tower is designed upon the present location of this highway, between Vine Street and Walnut Street, directly across from the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center and on axis with the John A. Roebling Suspension Bridge.
The remainder of this and all other sites of urban highways in Cincinnati would be returned to productive use as well, replacing the highways with dense, walkable buildings, neighborhoods, parks, and infrastructure. This can begin to right past injustices, particularly in the designation of a significant percentage of new housing units as affordable upon the former interstate highway land. This will produce a more vibrant downtown community for a diverse array of individuals, while respecting the individual through human scale architectural articulation.
In the 21st Century, the skyscraper is a symbol of globalization. The Queen City Tower inverts this symbol to be one of localization and differentiation, as a positive and necessary feature of humanity. This is a responsibility of the skyscraper, to respect the place in which it is built. Any building should do this, but the scale and visibility of a skyscraper, particularly in a city with few skyscrapers, gives the architect of such a building a greater and more serious responsibility.
This project was submitted in the 2021 Evolo Skyscraper Competition. Winners and honorable mentions can be viewed here.
As globalization homogenizes the world’s cities, this project envisions a different future that pulls from the strengths of humanity’s past. Every place should be culturally and visually distinct and should not forget local history in the building of a local future. This building captures Cincinnati’s 1800s prominence, industrially, culturally, and in terms of the American Italianate architectural style.
The building is designed as a series of stacked volumes of smaller Italianate buildings, separated by loggie. These buildings each represent the many midrise Italianate structures found in the nearby Over the Rhine neighborhood. The base of the building is rusticated, with hierarchical entranceways, and the roof is inspired by the Basilica Palladiana and the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall.
This project also envisions a future without urban highways. Downtown Cincinnati is suffocated by highways, such as I-71, which separates the city from the waterfront. This highway should be filled in, creating new urban development sites, a critical mass of urban activity, and walkable connectivity. This will also reduce urban pollution while limiting and relegating urban sprawl, and preserving natural lands in favor of dense, justified, efficient, sustainable development. The Queen City Tower is designed upon the present location of this highway, between Vine Street and Walnut Street, directly across from the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center and on axis with the John A. Roebling Suspension Bridge.
The remainder of this and all other sites of urban highways in Cincinnati would be returned to productive use as well, replacing the highways with dense, walkable buildings, neighborhoods, parks, and infrastructure. This can begin to right past injustices, particularly in the designation of a significant percentage of new housing units as affordable upon the former interstate highway land. This will produce a more vibrant downtown community for a diverse array of individuals, while respecting the individual through human scale architectural articulation.
In the 21st Century, the skyscraper is a symbol of globalization. The Queen City Tower inverts this symbol to be one of localization and differentiation, as a positive and necessary feature of humanity. This is a responsibility of the skyscraper, to respect the place in which it is built. Any building should do this, but the scale and visibility of a skyscraper, particularly in a city with few skyscrapers, gives the architect of such a building a greater and more serious responsibility.
This project was submitted in the 2021 Evolo Skyscraper Competition. Winners and honorable mentions can be viewed here.
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