Anticipating Los Altos Downtown Walking Tour

1 Main Street -Enchante Hotel shot with a normal lens

In anticipation of the Los Altos Downtown Walking Tour – 9am Saturday, Sept. 9, departing from 100 First Street –  I thought I would compare a real photo of the physical Enchante Hotel with the architect’s vision of her plan. [Lalah is not going to comment on downtown zoning or the downtown design guidelines, just  on project drawings that are supposed to inform neighbors and the public.] Conclusion:  The real hotel is quite a bit bulkier and imposing than whimsical drawing of Enchante below. Why?

It is a common problem with architects’ envisioning that they use a “mental camera” wide angle lens. There is no way to see this image with human eyes. You need to go look through a camera to see it. In both pictures, mine and hers, the human viewer is standing at a corner of Edith and Main. But I set the camera to match my natural eyes, she used “wide-angle” camera eyes.

At this corner of Edith and Main, the building is “felt” and seen by humans as much bulkier than depicted. Everything is much closer to the human viewer than depicted.

The Saturday tour will look at several other projects. (You may join the tour anywhere along the itinerary.)  In these project drawings provided by the city, you will see that – except for the Safeway drawing – the view depicted is impossible for a human pedestrian on the street to actually see and feel.

On the downtown Los Altos Walking Tour – conducted by Mayor Satterlee and city staff –  you can praise or gripe about:

This drawing understates the bulkiness of the real building as experienced by a pedestrian. When you stand on the corner of Edith at Main, it does not look this size to the human eye.

In general, with these project drawings, bulkiness is being minimimzed, public benefit spaces are being maximized, beyond what will actually be experienced by the person on the street after the thing is built. The public is misled.

LALAHPOLITICO:

Thank goodness the city staff is refining its requirements for plan submissions. We agree with city staff that 3D simulations and not necessary, but photoshopping following a few rules will do.

1) Use only a street level elevation. No bird’s eye elevation view or any other impossible vantage point for a pedestrian. The view has to be from a street level vantage point that actually exists. If there is a building blocking the view, don’t pretend that the view exists. ( A problem with Morris project depiction of the plaza setback)

2) Use a “normal lens” perspective, a natural human eye magnification, not a wide-angle which makes things look small and far away.

3) Stitch together normal lens photos (or drawings) to create a panorama of the site, showing some surrounding buildings. But it should only be as wide as human vision can see, WITHOUT turning your head to see more to the left and right. Insert the planned building into the scene. (This rule was violated with the Morris Project. It is impossible to see more the 30% of the Morris building along First Street without turning your head. It is large, and you are always close to it. You can’t see all at once.

Conclusion:

So for most commercial projects,  a half dozen or more of these “natural” drawings will be required to describe it for pedestrians.  A “natural scale” fly around would be a substitute, but is more expensive. Oh, and we’d still like to see the architect’s vision too.

Enchante Hotel as experienced from the San Antonio cross walk to the corner park. So much for the view of the hills as one drives and walks south on San Antonio.