Just in case anyone was hedging his bets, we can now conclude, after more than 20 years of steady development, that the area around Union Square and 14th Street has not been well served by the architectural community.

Much of this is Zeckendorf territory and their favored architects, Davis Brody Bond, have been responsible for most of what you see around the southern side of the park: the Zeckendorf Towers; 1 Union Square West, which houses the Virgin Megastore and the mysterious hand that extends from a smoking oculus on the façade of the red brick structure; University Hall at 110 E. 14th St, an NYU building; and The Palladium, an NYU dorm that rises above what was once a legendary nightclub of the same name. Matters were not helped about two years ago, with the opening of the Filene’s Basement and DSW Shoe Warehouse, developed by Vornado from designs by JJ Falk Design.

Most of these new buildings suffer not from downright ugliness, but from that more insidious affliction of Gotham’s built environment: appalling mediocrity. With the works of Davis Brody Bond, one has the sense that they are at least trying to come up with something sharp and imaginative, though they hardly succeed. As regards the Filene’s Basement building one has the impression that, as far as the architectural firm was concerned, imagination was never even an option.

Now, however, as if the area has not suffered enough from a surfeit of mediocre design, two new and contiguous buildings, the Claremont and 8 Union Square South, have come into being at the point where University Place meets Union Square. Both, as it happens, were developed by the Claremont Group, and both are the work of the architect Arpad Baksa.

The larger of the two, which is slightly less bad, is 8 Union Square South, which rises above what was once a four-story glass stair tower that Morris Lapidus designed for Crawford Clothes, a building whose survival was being debated by the Landmarks Preservation Commission even as the structure was undergoing demolition two years back.

8 Union Square South is an undistinguished box of a building that rises 13 stories, four of them in a setback, over the park. The structure seems uncertain whether to commit itself to the modernity of a dark curtain wall or to the historicist vernacular of a pale, limestone cladding. The result is a dreary non-description that is only slightly mitigated by a chamfered corner that orientates the base toward the park and adds some interest to one of the most important intersections in the city.

But the real problem here is that sense of value engineering that vitiates so many of the recent building projects around the five boroughs. There is a kind of tactility to vision, a sense of touch that is an often undervalued component of the art of architecture. And as you look at 8 Union Square South, you can feel, in the cheapness of the materials and the flat, slapped together quality of the window braces, a paltry disregard for the rich experiential rewards that accrue to a building that is clearly well-made, even when its design and overall conception is lacking.

If the dominant impression of this project is flimsiness, the reverse is true of the seven story Claremont, a stocky structure whose jaundiced stone facing, alternately rough and smooth, suggests an ungainly solidity better suited to a part of the world that is prone to earthquakes or the detonation of IEDs. The six stories of the façade alternate between rusticated windows and glazed balconies. The design, however, is so maladroit, so graceless, as to compel the question, “What was the architect thinking?” Is it possible that anyone truly loved this design, that there was no one willing to step in and suggest something entirely different, something that looked like a New York building in the first place? For the time being, this building may be the only one I have ever encountered that was positively enhanced by scaffolding, which spills over from the construction site of 8 Union Square South.

In the interests of ending on a slightly, and provisionally, more positive note for Mr. Baksa, let me say that, on the evidence of his Web site, he has designed somewhat better structures elsewhere in the city and the world. The Modern, which is under construction at 343 W. 16th St, appears — on the strength of the rendering — to hold some promise. Mr. Baksa is also the architect of Greenhouse 26, which is slated for completion next year and purports to be the city’s first eco-friendly hotel.

jgardner@nysun.com