Project: Michigan Place
↓
Michigan Place is located in a transitional neighborhood at the intersection of Michigan and Best Streets within the City of Buffalo. At this location, a collision of centuries old single-family homes meet five story affordable housing complexes that fill an entire block, the multi-storied City Honors High School complex, and the ever-expanding Buffalo Medical Campus, all of which significantly out scale the homes that surround them.
When conceptualizing a structure to transition from the scale of single-family homes to the massive structures across the street, we believed a softening of the architecture and scale was necessary at this intersection. Michigan Place was envisioned to be a 3-story structure whose height and roof lines directly correlated to the single-family homes that surround the building. Gable, hip and open ended half gable roof lines with multiple dormers spaced with varying relation to one another mimic the roof lines of the single-family homes that line the adjacent Michigan and Best Streets.
Masonry, large format tiles, and traditional siding and color tones were blended together to draw from the surrounding buildings of homes, City Honors and the Medical Campus to create a homogeneous language between the neighborhood’s structures.