Links in Progress: We can still build beautifully
A tour of interesting developments built in the last two decades
This is the seventh issue of ‘Links in Progress’, semi-regular roundups of interesting stuff that's happening in topics that we care about. In this one, Coby Lefkowitz reviews interesting developments built around the world in the last two decades. You can opt out of Links in Progress here.
This issue of Links in Progress is dedicated to practicing and aspiring architects, developers, planners, policymakers, public officials, and the general populace, who are interested in creating a better built environment in their own communities. Enjoy!
Location: Santa Barbara, California
Year Built: 2006
Building Type: Single Family Home
Unit Breakdown: Single Family Home
Architect: Jeff Shelton
Developer: The Ablitt Family
Ablitt Tower is a single family home in downtown Santa Barbara, California. Located on a tiny 20 foot x 20 foot lot, it demonstrates how whimsy and wonder can be imbued into the built environment anew. In its rejection of the standard front-yard-white-picket-fence-two-car-garage typology, it forces observers to question what a single family home can be. Not dissimilar to Gaudi’s impact in Barcelona, Shelton has delivered magical projects around the city, and has adorned its streets with tiles, lampposts, and railings.


Location: Charleston, South Carolina
Year Built: 2007 - 2024
Building Type: Inner block neighborhood
Unit Breakdown: 24 residential lots, 30 plus units (several ADUs and apartments scattered throughout the lot)
Architects: New World Byzantine, Craft Design Studio, American Vernacular, Liberatos Architects, Randolph Martz
Developers: George Holt, Cheryl Holt, Jerry Moran, Reid Burgess, Sally Eisenberg, Vince Graham
Catfiddle Street is that exceptionally rare project that wasn’t developed all at once, but rather was carefully put together over nearly two decades. Each new home rose organically in consideration of its neighbors, resulting in a feeling that, much like the rest of Charleston, makes it seem like it has existed for centuries, and naturally belongs exactly where it is. Few places built in the last several decades can claim as much. Accessing Catfiddle is like stumbling upon a cherished secret, as its entrances are unassuming narrow pathways that squeeze in between homes that are hardly 10 feet apart. It is a marvel of “inner-block urbanism”, where development occurs within the block, tucked in rear yards, as opposed to traditional streetfront urbanism.





Location: Portland, Oregon
Year Built: 2016
Building Type: Mixed-Use Office
Unit Breakdown: 16,000 square foot building with a ground floor cafe
Architect: Lever Architects
Developer: reworks
Offices are seldom integrated within a community. Either located in segregated “parks” or cloistered in a Central Business District (CBD), their scale and anonymity mean that they rarely make for good neighbors. What makes Albina Yard so interesting is that it embodies all that most offices are not: rising four stories with handsome wooden window frames that pop out from the large glass windows, it respects its neighbors without compromising on the boldness of its design. Cross-Laminated Timber (CLT) panels provide a warmth that is almost entirely absent in the sterile world of offices-for-rent. Albina Yard is an excellent precedent for suburban neighborhood commercial buildings.

Location: Wimbledon, London
Year Built: 2020
Building Type: Mixed-Use Office
Unit Breakdown: 48,000 square foot speculative office building with shops on the ground floor
Architect: MATT Architecture
Developer: Columbia Threadneedle
A wonderful transformation of a dreary old structure, Wellington House is a delightful mixed-use office building. Honoring the corner with graceful rounded windows, the usage of glazed ceramic tiles and sawtooth brickwork elevate what would otherwise be a nice-enough building to an exceptional one, whose gravity pulls passersby in to more closely inspect its thoughtful detailing.



Location: Portland, Oregon
Year Built: 2019
Building Type: Townhomes
Unit Breakdown: 6 homes
Architect: Polyphon
Developer: Ethan Beck Homes
Residents of suburban neighborhoods often express fears about new non-single-family housing changing the character of their communities. While these concerns may or may not be made in good faith, there are many wonderful new projects that prove these fears are unfounded. From the street, Berkeley 6 looks like a single family home with a two-gabled elevation. From the side, it reveals itself to be 6 townhomes, perfectly in keeping with the character of the neighborhood. For suburban areas that want to add more housing without feeling as though the essence of the neighborhood is changing, Berkeley 6 proves this can be readily accomplished.


E. Bronson Ingram College at Vanderbilt University
Location: Nashville, Tennessee
Year Built: 2018
Building Type: Residential College
Unit Breakdown: 350 beds, a dining room, great room, and series of lounges throughout the building
Architect: David M. Schwarz Architects, HASTINGS Architecture
Developer: Vanderbilt University
Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee has transformed its campus over the last two decades from a nice-but-unremarkable place, to one of the most exceptional locations for higher learning on the continent. Accommodating 5,200 students in a series of residential colleges, it has proven that one of the best ways to attract students is to be attractive.




Pauli Murray College & Benjamin Franklin College at Yale University
Location: New Haven, Connecticut
Year Built: 2017
Building Type: Residential College
Unit Breakdown: 500 beds, a dining room, library, coffee shop, gym, theater, pottery studio and series of lounges throughout the buildings
Architect: Robert A.M. Stern Architects
Developer: Yale University
Drawing on James Gamble Rogers' original residential colleges in New Haven, Yale has recently completed some of the country’s most extraordinary new buildings. Housing 904 students across 532,000 square feet encompassing dining halls, lounges, study rooms, classrooms, and multi-purpose space, the project is estimated to have cost between $500 million to $600 million in 2013 dollars. Though not cheap, it is a testament to America’s ability to create exceptional places anew at the confluence of ambition, prosperity, and skill.




Location: Chevy Chase, Maryland
Year Built: 2023
Building Type: Mixed-Use Apartment Complex
Unit Breakdown: 530 housing units (a mix of condos and rentals) and 110,000 square feet of retail, including a grocery store
Architect: David M. Schwarz Architects
Developer: The Bozzuto Group and The Chevy Chase Land Company
Located adjacent to a Purple Line stop on the DC Metro, Chevy Chase Lake is likely the finest collection of new mid-rise buildings in the country. A sterling example of transit-oriented-development made all the more remarkable given it is located in a highly affluent, and historically anti-development, suburb.
Location: New York, New York
Year Built: 2019
Building Type: Condo Building
Unit Breakdown: 14 homes
Architect: Roman and Williams
Developer: JDS
Terra cotta has been revived in gloriously wonderful ways in New York in the last decade. The ultimate example of this has been The Fitzroy, the luxury condo building located just a few steps from the High Line. Shimmering in the daytime when light hits its glazed facade, and brooding enchantingly in jazz-age sophistication at night, it proves that height is not a deterrent to good design nor compelling city-building. Indeed, there are few places that wouldn’t benefit from the construction of similar buildings, either lording as landmarks over their lower-rise dominion, or demanding attention in a sea of painfully anodyne mid-rise structures.
Location: Los Angeles, California
Year Built: 2019
Building Type: Office Complex
Unit Breakdown: 60 garden office pods
Architect: SelgasCano
Developer: Second Home
Second Home is a breath of fresh air amidst the highways and parking lots that populate Los Angeles–a true forest amidst the concrete jungle. Acknowledging that the city’s climate is its most valuable asset, the colorful pods that make up this office complex blur the lines between the indoors and the outdoors, with 360 degree glass walls and workspaces in the gardens that allow tenants to take full advantage of the California sun.
Location: Weesp, North Holland
Year Built: 2013
Building Type: Single Family Home Community
Unit Breakdown: 42 Homes
Architect: Braaksma & Roos
Developer: HBB
Weespergilde breaks the mold of suburban development through its bold use of natural materials in quasi-vernacular architecture. Part of what makes this project so compelling is that it’s familiar, with a slight twist. Designed for families and oriented around courtyards, it has far higher density than most North American subdivisions, but remains eminently genial, attractive, and comfortable.




Location: Wheeler District, Oklahoma City
Year Built: 2020
Building Type: Live-work Townhomes
Unit Breakdown: 10 Homes, a mix of commercial, retail, and residential ground floors
Architect: Sam Day (Dryline Architecture)
Developer: Sam Day
At 15 feet wide, three stories tall, and with flexible ground floor space, these 10 live/work townhomes are wholly novel, yet totally alluring. Rarely are new townhomes so fine grained in form. Rarer still are when any use is permitted on the ground floor (commercial, retail, workshop, or residential). The result in an intriguing mosaic that takes on the disparate personalities of the owners of each building, while the overall design language remains intact.


Location: Hội An, Vietnam
Year Built: 2021
Building Type: Cafe
Unit Breakdown: A three-story cafe
Architect: Yên Architecture
Developer: Bonte Cafe
Concrete can be a cold, austere, and forbidding building material when used carelessly. But when it’s tactfully designed and married with greenery, the resulting structures can be very elegant. And when the building leans into the public realm, as with this cafe, there are few places one would rather spend their time.



The Museum of Meenakari Heritage and Sunita Shekhawat Store
Location: Jaipur, India
Year Built: 2024
Building Type: Mixed-Use Structure
Unit Breakdown: A museum and a jewelry store
Architect: Studio Lotus
When I first came across this building, I didn’t think it was real. The level of detail, and ambition of design, are all but nonexistent in contemporary building practices. Upon consulting Google Street View, and seeing construction as well as completion images, I was not only wonderfully surprised, but inspired. The Jodhpur red sandstone is an exquisite building material, honored perfectly by the latticework ornamentation, making what might otherwise appear a squat structure grand and dignified.



Location: Brooklyn, New York
Year Built: 2023
Building Type: Townhomes
Unit Breakdown: 5 homes
Architect: Boro Architects
There exists a popular sentiment that we can’t build as well as we used to. That our best days are behind us. These new townhomes in Brooklyn, thankfully, should disabuse many from this notion. These Brooklyn townhomes are indistinguishable from their predecessors that rose a century and more before. We should not always mimic styles from the past, but where context and will demand it, it is simply not true that we cannot build as well as we once did. Indeed, in some respects, we can build better.