Ted Talks

Ted Lott graduated from the University of Michigan in 1991, the worst possible time, he says, to be a new architect breaking into the real world. But he found his first job in Grand Rapids and he's been here ever since. The farsighted draftsman talks about the state of New Urbanism, what makes a good building, and the Church of the Car.

Your firm has executed some of the more innovative redevelopment projects in Grand Rapids. What's your opinion of New Urbanism, the popular movement to build more compact, walkable, diverse, and sustainable community centers?

New urbanism is in the process of crumbling under its own weight. It's being adopted by mass culture. Now we have home builders in suburbia doing New Urbanism. We don’t even talk about it around our shop. We prefer to do old urbanism.

Purple East, your first major project in downtown Grand Rapids, remains the southern outpost of downtown's revitalization. Why is that building unique?

It was the first building locally to attempt modernism in an historic district. There were people who were very much against it. But we were able to make the case that the building was appropriate. Now that part of town would feel strange without it.

So modernism and the more traditional principles of urbanism can coexist?

Good urbanism is irrelevant of style. We do modern design. But we're adamant about maintaining that urbanity.

What makes a building function urbanistically?

The basics. And the most basic thing about a good urban building is a storefront. You must have a door, for example, that people feel comfortable going to. That means an inset entry with a covered place where people can kick off their shoes and take a moment to collect themselves before walking in. These kinds of common cues at the street level are essential no matter what the building is used for.

We have good examples of urbanism in GR, like the new art museum, and we have some really disappointing examples like, in my opinion, the Icon on Bond condos. Why do we seem to struggle with recapturing the basic principles of urbanist design that our predecessors understood in the 19^th century?

Things were not necessarily any better 150 years ago. Even in the crucibles of Chicago and New York, developers forged some good things and some very bad things. The devastation of the Urban Renewal movement made it easy for many of us to forget about the really bad things.

Good point. But why do we continue to have good and bad buildings today?

The problem you see in bad urbanism is that some architects turn away from the basics. We also have to understand that it's ridiculously difficult to develop a project and get it done. That can be especially true in cities. Whether the architecture is ugly or beautiful just doesn’t matter.

If ugly buildings are just as hard to build as beautiful ones, why don’t we just build beautiful ones?

Some of that depends on people like me. Some of it depends on the people who make the financial decisions. And still more of it depends on the cultural way we think about our structures and what makes them successful.

Say more about that. What's one issue that frustrates the pursuit of good urbanism?

No place in the world has been affected by the transportation decisions of the 20^th century more than Michigan. The infrastructure that was deemed indispensable before World War Two – the railroads, the streetcars, the sidewalks – was not only ripped out and forgotten about, the ground was salted by the Church of the Car. So the single biggest issue in any project today is parking. It has a huge influence on how a building will ultimately look, feel, and function.

That can be a sensitive issue in a city like Grand Rapids, where most people perceive a parking problem. How do you manage the matter in your day-to-day work?

Our attitude now is that parking is always a problem. It doesn’t matter if there are 600 spaces out front or two. There's never been a project that doesn’t have a parking problem. And we're not going to solve it by buying more land and making more parking spots. That doesn’t make financial sense. So, in my view, there's nothing to talk about. Of course there's a parking problem. So what? We say that often times to the frustration of the client. But there's really nothing we can do.

Can you site a specific client where you butted heads on this issue?

I had this argument with my parents when I was doing a house for them several years ago. They wanted a 2 ½ stall garage. I said 'no way. I'm not going to do it.' They said 'why not.' I said 'you have one car, we have a limited budget, and we're not going to spend money housing cars that you don’t own.'

The City of Grand Rapids, in many ways, seems stuck in that same rut. Spending a ton of money it doesn’t have to build car storage on land that could function at a much higher level with more dynamic buildings or public space.

The problem is that too many people still think that housing a car is the highest and best use of land. That's simply not the case. But it's going to take a significant shift in the perception of the market for that to change. Energy prices. Land prices. Or something that drastically increases the demand for density in the city, like a transit system that is so usable and so convenient for so many people that it makes it stupid to have a car.

How did your parent's house turn out?

We eventually built a one-stall garage. It has been fine for them.

You also designed your own residence, which is a condo on Diamond Avenue that pioneers a more metropolitan style of residential construction than GR is used to. What influenced the design process for that project?

The core idea for the project comes from a traditional townhouse diagram you see all over Brooklyn, Chicago, or other older cities with more land pressures. The lower unit, for instance, can be a granny flat, a rental apartment, or an office. I like the fact that I don’t have a yard and I can walk or ride my bike downtown.

The front of the condo has huge picture windows. Yet it sits pretty close to a fairly busy street. What aspect of the design really makes the project work?

The closer you get to the street, from an urban standpoint, the more you have to be lifted up to get that privacy. There are other townhouse projects around town that feel very strange because they're at grade. The separation from the road is a key distinction.

What projects around the city do you most admire?

My favorite new place in Grand Rapids is the Meanwhile. When was the last time a neighborhood bar opened up in the city? It's been a long, long time. They just simply cleaned up a storefront and made a nice urban neighborhood space.

We're investing billions of dollars to rebuild this city and your favorite project is a little bar? What about the blockbusters?

No projects – including our own – are without their faults. The new J.W. Marriot, for example, is a fortress. But it's a pretty damn nice one. I've been more excited about that than I thought I would be. I think I'm going to like the Van Andel Institute a lot when it's done. I'm optimistic about how the new [Grand Rapids] Art Museum will work. I'm also watching with interest the work that Integrated Architecture is doing for the Diocese. That could be a really important project to unify the quadrant around Wealthy and Division. It's a huge opportunity. They appear to be on the right track. And I couldn’t be more jealous.

Is there a particular building or street corner that the architect in you is chomping at the bit to get its hands on?

I'm not going to tell you. Suffice it to say we're in this business, in this town, because there is so much opportunity. The kinds of sites that get us excited are the unused, the leftovers, or the weird little spots that are generally overlooked. We all want to do huge projects. But the incremental stuff – like the Meanwhile – is the important stuff. Patience is the one thing you have to learn as an architect. Things never happen as fast as you want them to.