Modern Southern

Team: Constantine Ronquillo, Ammar Munshi

Year:  2010

Location:  Beaufort, South Carolina

Program: Urban Design, Competition entry

Beaufort is a historical Lowcountry city located approximately 50 miles from Savannah Georgia. The city is renowned for its scenic location and maintains a historical antebellum character and architecture. The downtown area is the historical center of commerce and is now focused towards visitors and tourists. As the city gained prominence and increased its tourism attendance, the need for urban revitalization in the surrounding areas adjacent the downtown has become inevitable.

Bladen Street is a street corridor adjacent to Bay street, where the downtown is located. The city has explored the possibility of taking advantage of the situation by means of redeveloping the street to its full potential and eventually expanding the tourism area. A full analysis of the area and design solutions have been requested. At present, the area is occupied by single- family houses, law offices, voids, cemeteries and torn-out buildings; all of which present urban elements that are needed to be dealt with.

The project focused on building a new environment that promotes a distinct character of its own, deviating but complementing the predominant antebellum architecture of the area. The only viable way of uplifting the economic profit on the location is through optimizing commerce and residents and to entice in wide variation of activities and participants. The program includes: array of modernist and multicolored buildings,retention of selected residential buildings, restaurants, roof gardens, pocket parks, mini stages, outdoor benches and a midrise apartment building.