A Brief Introduction

Urban.

More academic minded individuals like to begin with a definition of terms, so I will start by saying what I mean when I say 'urban realm.' Many will picture towering buildings over bustling roads, others will see industry, some traffic jams and noise. Urban is frequently associated with cities, large or small, with grid streets, lots of pedestrians, public transportation, et cetera. I am not disagreeing with these individuals, but I say that urban environments are pretty much any environment where people coexist and thrive. Some may take issue with this definition, because that would be suburban developments are urban. That would mean small farm towns are urban. And I would argue, indeed they are. They are just urban forms at a different scale, because in the end, if people are using spaces and infrastructure that was designed to be used by the public, that is pretty much the crux of an urban setting.

Why? Why Write About This?

I am not much of a reader; people cannot get me to read books even if my life depended on it. But as far as I can see, the best way to learn is from experience, from going to a place and 'feeling it.' Architects are familiar with the phrase genus loci, which can be generalized to mean sense of place, the feeling a space gives you and so on. I described in my side bar note that designers of structures are supposed to keep in mind that drawings and models and even walk through movie clips cannot do justice. Even a full scale model, in a way, cannot do what a building will do when it is built. Architects are supposed to imagine, foresee, and build upon a vision to make it a reality. It is no easy task, and I argue still to this day many fail at fully recognizing design flaws because of it. But who can blame them?

When you are in a classroom looking at slides of the Roman Pantheon, or getting lectured on the layout of Central Park, we get a very programmatic, analytical take on the design. This left side of the brain approach is very important, but it appears that when talking about Urban forms, the left side arguments take over much more. I am too lazy to remove notes from a box in a room a few rooms away, so I will draw on my memory. The memory of my only urban theory class, full of graduate students with a few of the undergraduates like me. "Access equals value," "define the edge of the street," and "generators of urban form," are phrases that come to mind. But they lack a right side element. I find that walking through cities this is left to a sort of spontaneous order, which then in turn gives us the final form.

To make my argument more clear, it is as if I learned only how to bubble diagram a city. I am not regarding bubble diagrams as worthless. In fact, quite the contrary. Bubble diagrams prove to be strong foundations for any plan of design, but the articulation is where the devil can come into play. Who cares if the public can access a park, if the access if unattractive, blocked, uninviting. The immediate historical precedence of a well-intended policy to spawn a better city environment was discovered in New York after the Seagram Building (Mies Van der Rohe) was erected with it's large public plaza. Policy shifted to include plaza design as an incentive of more building rights of developers, which resulted in a slew of new plaza designs around the city. Many were terrible -- they were cold, uninviting, and a pure example of how the left brain can get the best of the right brain.

Intent

But what is a good right side design? In an urban environment, I argue you need strong precedence. Cities in general have many good examples of spaces that 'work' and many that do not. By traveling to just a single city, one can deduce what even well known spaces could benefit from. What clandestine spaces are to be discovered? And more importantly, a discovery of what makes any space in any city successful. A look at how a place looks on foot, by car, and who knows what else...I am excited. I hope you will join me on this shot in the dark approach to design critique.