Monday, July 1, 2013

Coldspring Newtown: Baltimore's Modern Oasis

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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