With sharp edges, raw concrete and angular, fortress-like design, some of downtown’s most important public buildings and spaces—City Hall, the River Center and the Riverfront Plaza—can seem pretty imposing.
But in the decades since the buildings went up as part of a public complex clustered around St. Louis Street, ideas about what constitutes as inviting civic design have changed, 225 notes in a feature from the current issue.
Today many of downtown’s important buildings are undergoing renovations to soften their edges and create more welcoming entrances.
The River Center has already gotten new entrances framed in glass and steel to break up the walls of concrete. The box-like public library was torn down in 2016, with a sleek and modern new version set to open in late 2018, and the multilevel Riverfront Plaza is being beautified with more organic landscaping.
The city-parish also is planning to revamp the River Center Theatre’s exterior and lobby with floor-to-ceiling glass and metal panels.
LSU architecture professor Michael Desmond has studied and written extensively about Louisiana and Baton Rouge’s architecture. His late father’s firm was responsible for much of the City Hall complex’s design.
“Dad’s idea was to focus the whole complex toward the river to use it to frame the Old State Capitol,” says Desmond, who calls his father’s design “rational modernism.” “It was a planning move more than an architectural style move.”
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