Fresh
off of his freshman structure Moshe Safdie, the mind behind the infamous
Habitat 67, is called by the Baltimore Department of Housing and
Urban Development. Baltimore's plan for Safdie Architects is to build a
new modernist town on a hilly piece of land boarding the JFX Expressway. The
plan Safdie designs are even more far reaching in scope than its Canadian
counterpart. The concept is called the Coldspring Newtown and it is a
completely planed community of mixed housing and retail designed to be a
"City within a city" as Safdie describes it. By 1981 the first set of
"Deck Houses" are completed as part of the first phase of
construction. This complex of interlocking brutalist townhomes are unique in
that they offer a car free living area elevated above the roads and parking.
This idea of creating a truly walk able space for its residents was a
central part of Safdie's plan. However money began to run thin in Baltimore and
Safdie architects never got the call they were waiting for to build the rest of
the town. What’s left today is a small enclave of beautiful modern town homes
that seem almost frozen in a sprit of optimism for a new way of life. Filled
with a wide range of residents the Coldspring Newtown deckhouses still hold up
to their originally lofty hopes to provide a new affordable way of living in
the city.
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